Tag Archives: greenhouse

In the Green Mid Winter

The Winter Solstice.

Winter Table Decorations for the Local Farmshop Cafe

Eight and a half thousand people gathered to see the sun rise behind the Heel Stone and send its first rays into the heart of Stonehenge on the shortest day of the year.We assume the Ancients celebrated the Solstice because from now daylight hours will start to increase. In the middle of winter, we can just begin to feel a little hopeful, with spring just over the horizon.

Like an ancient pagan, I invest more hope in the solstice with each passing year. I will be looking at the garden for those green shoots which might be groping for the lengthening days. Goodness in the dark days of winter. For me, those green shoots would normally be garlic and onions, but in a change of tack in the Midlife Garden, we have not planted garlic this year.

The other day I saw tiny little bulbs sprouting on the top of three of the Allium Ping Pong I planted last year. In 2025 they only partially flowered, because of the dry summer. Instead, they have produced a plethora of baby bulbs. So, I have stuffed them into pots – and, with any luck, I hope to plant them out in the early spring, when they could provide some colour and, perhaps, some income.

Elsewhere in the garden, I am hopeful the five hundred tulips have settled in and are not rotting under the heavy autumnal rain. Whenever I see Monty Don planting tulips, he bangs on about the need for ‘free draining soil,’ as he shovels grit into his pots. No grit in my tulip bed, but I remain positive.

Free drainage is not a great feature of our clay soil, which was one reason I did follow Monty’s advice with my Dahlias. I lifted them before the frost, even washing the soil off them, as per MD’s advice, and left them in the greenhouse to dry off. Whereupon the hard frost bit them, panicking me into wrapping them up and storing them in the garage. But, as they were still a bit damp, I only succeeded in creating the perfect conditions for many of them to rot. Maybe next time I’ll follow local advice and leave them in the ground, well-mulched. Where, I guess, the rain can rot them instead.

It would be easy to get disheartened when stuff wilts, rots, or dies in the garden, but gardening, by definition, is a pragmatic and uplifting activity, even in the depths of winter. In the greenhouse, there are plenty of seedlings doing well, with sweet peas just coming up and antirrhinums standing strong in their pots, ready for the new season. They might not be flowering by the first wedding of the year on 2nd April (fingers crossed for the tulips on that one) but they will be going strong for a bride’s bouquet in July.

And that is what gardening does: it encourages us to look forward, with patience and positivity, and in the meantime, it keeps us stimulated and busy.

Slugs and Snails and Puppy Dogs’ Tails

Is that a carrot I see before me?

May was a busy but nerve-wracking month in the Midlife Garden.  After starting our cut flowers in storage boxes, they germinated quickly and copiously, but by April we face the challenge of what to do with all those healthy looking seedlings when they outgrew their boxes but looked a little too delicate to go outside.

We kept them protected in the greenhouse, with the lid off, but soon started getting leggy like a load of seedling Peter Crouches.   So, on 16th April, we took a gamble and planted them out in the raised beds, weeks before any theoretical last frosts.  They were not entirely unprotected, though, as we circled the little darlings with an array of glass to create a cold frame out of the raised bed.  And we kept a supply of fleece in case of frosts and kept a watchful eye on the weather forecast.

Incredibly the plants survived, mainly due to the unpredictable frosts not arriving.  Instead, it has been soaking wet, which has bought about the more predictable destruction at the hands (if that is the right term) of the invertebrates.

Every year I plant out wonderful, healthy seedlings, expecting an abundant crop, only to see them dismantled by slugs.  It is the horticultural equivalent of insanity – doing the same thing over again, with the same catastrophic result.  Normally, after the initial dismay and a couple of single malts, I am reasonably sanguine.  But not this year.  Oh no, not for the summer of 2024.  We need flowers.  And lots of them.  And on the 13th July.

We started looking up every means of delaying, defeating or destroying the slimy assailants.  We started with beer traps, which proved to be very popular, but when it rains the beer is diluted and, anyway, there still seemed to be quite a few teetotal slugs who avoided the alcoholic orgy to feast on the cosmos and sunflowers. 

There are conscientious gardeners online who have pseudo-scientifically tested all the usual remedies with varying results.  Eggshells, coffee grounds, gravel, sand, and talcum powder were partially or wholly ineffective – depending on the ground conditions.  But one method I had not come across was the use of brambles to create a barrier.  I have tried that on the sunflowers.  It is the second planting of sunflowers – the first ones ended up as stumps, alongside jam jars full of beer sodden slugs who did not make it to the sunflower feast – but, for now, the brambles seem to be working. 

Another way to rid your garden of slugs is nightly hunting expeditions down the garden.  It is a dispiriting sight, seeing a load of slugs heading across the grass like a bunch of post-apocalyptic Mad Max crazies hell-bent on destroying your crops.  The other night we came home late and found the Bells of Ireland covered in the slime balls.  The Bells are the potential signature flower of the summer – it will be first time we have managed to grow them to maturity if we actually achieve it, so the attack on them was the final straw. 

Now we have gone all medieval.  By which I do not mean hot oil, burning fat, slings, arrows or just a pike or two.  We have decided to use moats to keep them at bey since we do not think slugs and snails can swim.  And, so far, it seems to be working.

Pre-season training

Basil?!

We are into March. The days are lengthening.  The February seeds have germinated and are looking sprightly: the race to produce those early tomatoes has started and the chillis are up too.  We need to make sure they are in good shape for the summer ahead.

The change of month means that I can now allow myself to open those packets of veg and flowers seeds that advised sowing from March onwards.   Having a greenhouse is a boon at this time of the year, but before the seedlings graduate to this I have been starting some in the warmth of the spare bedroom before putting them in the conservatory which is no more than a giant leaky cold frame at this time of the year, but still marginally warmer than the greenhouse at night.

It’s not all seeds in trays, though:  I’ve sown a couple of rows of peas and sugar snaps in the raised beds.  The peas will once again be Hurst Greenshaft – The Old Man’s favourite.  I keep a picture on my desk of him proudly standing alongside the Greatest Peas Of All Time.  It is something to which I can aspire.  The key might be the soil – which was a friable fecund tilth at the old place: the result of decades of cultivation.  My one year old raised beds are composed of a thin layer of compost overlaying the claggy clay topsoil I bought last spring.  I have put some well-rotted manure in with the peas but I fear it will take many more years’ work before it gets anywhere near as fertile as the last place.

We’ll wait to see if their early form is good enough to ensure good performance this season, whatever the ground..

Jalapeno Chilli
Seedlings in Cold Frame
Chilli Caldero
Others have been busy in the garden (or bird bath)
Nicotiana
Pea Trench between late leeks and early broad beans
Cosmos sown
Back Bed with daffodils

Veronica or Veronicastrum Virginicum?*

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Let ’em Dangle

I read a good article by James Wong in the Grauniad this weekend in which he gave his four top tips for beginners in the garden. I never feel like I have a great well of knowledge about gardening, although I have friends who see me as the expert in gardening, in relative terms that is, because I actually plant stuff, grow stuff and harvest or cut other stuff at the end of the process.  Although I still regard myself as a beginner in this big green-fingered world, reading James Wong’s article made me think that perhaps, in the horticultural educational ladder, I would most probably be in a position to now graduate from beginners’ to improvers classes.

James Wong says persistence is key – to not be put off by things dying on you.  Well, I think I do that.  There have been times when growing veg this summer has felt like a Sisyphean task – as successive batches of chard and peas have perished on the raised bed killing fields like ranks of yeomanry heading over the top to be mown down by slugs, sparrows or simple drought.  But I have rolled that metaphorical rock back up the hill and actually made it stick on occasion to reap the benefits in plentiful courgettes and beans, amongst other things.

Second piece of advice is to avoid worrying about weeds, which are simply flowers int the wrong place.   Using new raised beds has been a real treat this summer, especially with the dry weather so there has been little or no weeding to be done, but I have taken James’s idea to one extreme by allowing some of the random seedlings that emerged from the mudslide of the great greenhouse disaster to flourish in the warm indoor beds.  So I now have a sprinkling of zinnias and Ammi poking through the sweet peppers and tomatoes.  Why not?

Tip number three is simply to plant stuff in the ground and not bother with pots too much.  This is something I could take heed of as I am the worst helicopter parent when it comes to germinating and growing seeds.  I put them in lovingly sieved compost in individual seed trays and then check on them everyday – perhaps every hour – until they are poking through.  Then fuss over them even more watering and watching until they are bursting out of the trays and need to be potted on or planted out.  Then – to my amazement – when let loose from their molly coddled world of shop-bought compost and careful watering, planted out in the naked earth, they flourish.  Like grumpy teenagers living away from home for the first time they suddenly take flight, get on with growing up properly and become sensible members of the community.  So why not sow more seeds direct into the earth?  It might be what they really want.  Perhaps I’ll try that…

And finally Mr Wong advises using Latin names for everything.  Just get out and learn them he says:  no one really knows how Latin – a dead language – should be pronounced so no worries there.  And by using the correct Latin name you can be sure of what you are buying rather than vaguely describing the blue one of this or that flower, you can be pedantically specific.  But as someone whose school coerced him into taking Latin O-Level (My fault: I was one of only a few who actually revised for the exam in the second form) and subsequently scraped a C grade at sixteen (a “4” in today’s exciting GCSE grading), I have never been keen on the language even in horticultural use.   Until recently I would have assumed that streptocarpus was a fish flavoured throat lozenge.  But I will perhaps try the Latin way more often.  Does that include more gesticulation when I speak, suffering wild swings of emotion and using the horn on my car with impunity?  If it makes the broad beans grow, I’ll give it a shot.

I may not have been happy with being made to do latin as a schoolboy, but if things don’t go as planned, it is better to laugh than to cry.   As a latin student might have said of my designated superiors at the last educational establishment I left:

“Eos si iocus non possint pedicabo…”

 

“What a Good Year for the Courgettes…”
Peas in our Time?
The Other Side of Summer
Indoor Zinnias…
…Accidents will Happen
This Year’s Models
Pump it up…Jersey Devil
Tamp the Dirt Down

 

*With apologies to Elvis Costello

The Dry

Two weeks ago I started this post.  I don’t know what got in the way of me completing it.  Perhaps it was the end of term which passed in a whir of school trips, successive cover lessons involving repeat showings of Blue Planet or feature films and the year eight boys going mob-handedly feral at lunchtime.  Family matters have also been an issue with Mrs B’s mother slipping from this mortal coil (four days after celebrating her 70th Wedding anniversary).  But the circle of life was shown to be rotating strongly with the graduation of our little girl to the rank of qualified medical practitioner.  That’s a doctor to you or me. (No, not a nurse, nor even a pharmacist.  A proper doctor).

Time is passing so fast these days and yet what I wrote two weeks ago unsurprisingly fits well for now:

*****************

Today I saw the first rumours of hose pipe bans coming into force – though not, thankfully down here in the wet West Country.  Surprisingly, they are talking about the North West being the place they will need to impose the restrictions.  I always thought Manchester and Liverpool got more than their fair share of rain, but then I guess they also have more than their fair share of residents to drink all the water from the tap (like the Tiger Who Came to Tea).

I am not sure how the garden would cope if I were able to water it regularly via a hose pipe.  When I started the garden in the winter, it was chucking down with rain and I was more concerned with drying the clay soil out rather than retaining water.  But regular watering is a fact of life at the moment and the veg have hit their stride.  We now have courgettes, potatoes, green beans, runner beans, mangetout, kale, carrots, onions and shallots.  And we have salad coming out of our ears as well as raspberries and blueberries starting to ripen.

Tomatoes will be in plentiful supply soon, but we’re just waiting for the first sweet million to ripen, then they will all go off like a firework.

Yields have not been as good as I might have expected at the old place, but for a first season on a new plot I feel pretty pleased.

 

French, Runners, carrots, mangetouts, courgettes
Blueberries
Sunflowers – in their element
Greenhouse – peppers, lettuce and toms
Green Millions
Jersey Devil

Green Shoots

Back to a new term and the new garden as we prepare to put my father to rest on Monday.

Potting Shed being put to use

It has, of course, been a strange time – the combination of funeral arrangements, sorting The Old Man’s estate and domestic affairs, combined with family matters has kept me occupied through the latter part of the holidays. Having a six-day break in Arran was a much-needed breather and by driving eight hours north we also found far better weather than the West of England enjoyed.

We are now at school in at what is amusingly labelled the summer term. It would have been nice to have had a few days in the garden in the latter half of the hols, but the rain has been incessant and in one of the few dry intervals when I tried to cut the grass, the mower broke.  Getting the garden under control does is not coming easily.

Still, I am glad I made the investment in the greenhouse allowing me to plant plenty of seed trays.  The potting shed is coming into its own with the last surviving hen keen to help out on occasion.  Everything is late, but we finally have some tomato seedlings poking through as well as Cavolo Nero, cabbages and PSB.  I thought we had some chillis up, but they turned out to be mushrooms. Not what I was expecting at all.  They grew one day, died the next.  Hey ho.  Might need to look at a different brand of potting compost.

On the upside, the potatoes are looking well chitted and are more than ready to get into the ground. The down side being that I have not been able to prepare any beds in the waterlogged clay soil.  I have the frames for the raised beds, but no compost or topsoil to go in them.  That’s a plan for another week.

Help wanted?
One small tomato for man..

 

Putting Your Back Into It

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Even Ella seems depressed by the weather

Back to school after a half term break of mixed fortunes. I started out with a burning desire to get the veg patch properly started with visions of raised beds marked out next to what promised to be a dazzlingly constructed greenhouse, risen from the pile of aluminium and glass in the corner of the lawn (well, field).

After a wet but enjoyable weekend in Liverpool with the youngest, the week stretched out before me with the promise of constructive horticultural efforts to come. But the North West rain followed us south (very cold and very wet) to put a major dampener on my efforts.  And then, while carrying out the first garden dig, my back gave way.  It was not one of those minor tweaks.  The movement in my lower spine was of a tectonic level that registered on the Richter scale.   The sound of my spinal plates collapsing was only drowned out by  the sound of the pouring rain and my heavy breathing as I maniacally turned the sodden earth to transplant the rhubarb.

My first reaction is always one of anger and frustration combined with feelings of stupidity that – as someone with a history of back pain – I had allowed myself to nearly rupture a disc once again. The sentiments regarding my own stupidity were clear in the look Mrs B gave me when I told her later but, frankly, I can’t live my life trying to mitigate against potential injury, when I am needing to design and dig a garden. It’s just a risk you take – like face planting in snow board in big air or tripping on the start line in speed skating. You just gotta go for it.

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The base is levelled (and square). Now just the frame and glass…

But from there the week did get better and with Mrs B’s able assistance we got fence panels erected at the back and managed to construct the greenhouse.  We constructed the frame, levelled it and glazed it without losing a single pane or running out of screws, although I nearly lost a thumb when I impulsively wiped some green mould off one of the panes.  Instead of wiping the face of the glass, my thumb ran along the corner edge – carving a long slice down the length of the thumb pad.

Two plasters stemmed the flow of blood, and two visits to the osteopath seem to have mended the back, so this weekend I was able to (carefully) start the construction of those raised beds.  I even managed to delve deeper into my atavistic gardening spirit by burning a very effective bonfire.

The garden is beginning to take shape.  Is that spring I see just around the corner? Answer:  No.  We have a week of Siberian conditions to get through first.

 

Same Old Same Old

It’s been a while since I posted, which suggests that I have not done a great deal in the garden – which is true, and fills me with mild panic that I might be lagging behind in preparation for the coming growing season.  So I took a quick look at what I did during February and March in the previous years and it was both reassuring and rather bitter-sweet.

In 2013 it was raining hard in February as I cleaned the greenhouse.  A year later it was raining even harder and the levels were under water. But the Old Man had a trailer of ten tons of manure delivered.  (That manure was finally finished last autumn when I gave up chiseling away at the last compacted layer of it).

In February 2015 I cleared the Silver Wedding and Boomerang beds and potted up plants that would eventually populate the new boomerang. I was still harvesting Red Kale and the new hens’ run was being built (with the help of Jim) by the cow stall.  And last year I was in Arran, enjoying the Scottish air, but feeling the first symptoms of heart disease. I put my little chitters out a couple of weeks after potato day and planted my tomatoes and chillis.

A year on and I approach spring with a shiny new stent in a coronary artery, a greenhouse that still looks like my artery did a year ago, but with a bunch of seedlings that are sprouting strongly.

Since my last post The Old Man has been in hospital recovering from his fall while I have been dealing with the usual at sporting issues at school.  But now it’s holiday time and an afternoon in the garden simply weeding, mulching and planting gladdens the heart – with or without a stent.

Winter tassles
White Sprouting
Tulips emergin
The aftermath of Storm Doris
Chitting
Best parsnips. Ever
Where did the other half of the Blue Cedar go?

Dead Air

Retaking territory after the weeds
Re-taking territory after the weeds

It rained yesterday.  Bucketloads.  Which was a good thing.  Not in the “It’ll do the garden good” kind of way, because the garden is plenty wet enough thanks.  No – it gave us the excuse to stay indoors and watch the battle of Good v Evil which was how the World Athletics Championships had been billed.  Having had the brilliance and farce / tragedy of the women’s Heptathlon as Ennis-Hill ruled supreme and Johnson-Thompson fouled out (tragically? stupidly?) we had the Bolt v Gatlin race for the soul of athletics.  The whole eternal battle thing was a little over the top, but it was pleasing to see the Good Guy beat the one wearing the metaphorical black stetson.  Usain rode off with gold on his golden Palomino.

Raspeberries are secure
Raspeberries are secure

After that breathless excitement it was time turn to our own Midday in the garden of Good and Evil.  There is plenty of decent stuff in the garden – such as my nice new fruit cage that I have manufactured out of the twisted remains of the gazebo that took a battering in the June gale, and the flowers that we planted are still blooming:  Cosmos are brilliant, Rudbeckia tall and proud, Gladiolae still glad to be gay and Veronica small but perfectly formed.

There are plenty of veg, if one looks hard enough:  courgettes ranging from petite to XXXXL, green beans, runner beans and dwarf french (although the climbing french for some reason have simply whithered on the cane).  Plenty of potatoes, summer psb, and spicy, peppery salad leaves.

Eggs have hatched
Eggs have hatched

But there is still a constant battle of Good and Evil here too.  The cabbage whites have managed to lay their eggs and we now wage war with the caterpillars which have stripped some plants clean.  The leeks which we planted before we went away, were razed to the ground within 24 hours so we raised the barricades for them and they seem to have recovered.  The lawn (well, grassy area) has more patches than a quilters’ convention with splodges of bare earth dotted all over showing a  constant reminder of mole activity.  And the roses have once again been given the sign of the black spot with death and decay to follow.  Not even the greenhouse is immune where the ants nests are abundant despite the ants always seeming to take to the air (I thought they all flew on one day and that was it?).  I am not sure how much damage they actually cause, but surely they cannot be helping?

But despite the dead air of the greenhouse there is still some promising news with the first two tomates finally making it to the table – about three months after the gardening giants of Galhampton had started cropping their wonder plants.   Ours will taste all the better for the wait – or at least that is how I try to argue it with Mrs B.

Spring Clean

Seen Better Days
Seen Better Days

In the past two weeks we have had a major eclipse, the term has finished at school and Parliament has been dissolved to make way for the General Election.  All worthy or exciting events, but frankly not as exciting for this midlife green fingered gopher as the opportunity to get out in the garden and actually get some stuff done.  So while the leaders debate who has failed whom, gongs are given out at school for adding up really quickly or colouring between the lines and the moon tries to blot out the sun, it is good to address  important issues like cleaning the greenhouse which, as always at this time of year, lives up to its billing as – literally – a green house, such is the mould on the glass.  But a quick dose of Jeyes fluid and a spray with the hose pipe and an afternoon’s work has seen off twelve months advancing algae.

Birdcatcher
Birdcatcher

While Mrs B and I were working on ridding one airborne invader from the garden the faithful Lab-Retriever was working a little riddance of her own for another airborne invader.  Ella just does not get the fact that as a Retriever (or Labrador – whatever half of her genetic makeup is taking precedence at the time) she really ought to wait till a bird is shot before bringing it back.  She managed to flush out a pheasant that had taken up temporary residence in the garden and took up the challenge of downing the bird.  I guess, for a dog that is obsessed with squirrels and is constantly trying to work out ways of retrieving them from the branches, the chance to snatch a bird is a rare opportunity for hope to triumph over commonsense expectation.  So despite our demands to the contrary, Ella rampaged through shrub and border in her quest and triumphantly brought the bird back to us.  A rare victory for canine over avian, though pheasants barely qualify as flying birds  (certainly not as part of  Noel Gallagher’s band), but that is why we do not have cats, as we value the bird life around here too much.

Higgledy Sweet Peas
Higgledy Sweet Peas

The past couple of weeks have been spent planting a few seeds and planning our flower growing – at which point a big “shout out” for my new BGF (best gardening friend) at Higgledy Garden.  I have just discovered this fab website which can cater for all our flower seed needs as well as entertaining us with regular blog and Facebook posts.  I bought an excellent value selection of sweet peas from Ben and he threw in a packet of nicotiana for good measure.  The sweet peas are in and doing well in the sparkling greenhouse and I will no doubt be picking out nicotiana soon.  The scent around the garden come July should be intoxicating.